I always did wonder, does a shockwave collide with objects? Is it a surface, a region? How does a unit not glitch and get damaged twice? What if a unit touches a shockwave, then outpaces it and the shockwave passes over it again? Or if a unit were bounced around on the edge of a shockwave. Would a large, slow shockwave be too costly from storing its interactions with many units? Or would many small shockwaves be worse? ....These are the questions that keep me up at night. Imagine if every explosion in PA had a shockwave. Boom.
What shockwaves are you talking about? I don't know of any 'shockwaves' in the game currently. The only thing I would imagine close to that is artillery damage.
An expanding ring (or sphere) of destruction. Think of it like a... well, a wave. That damages, or shocks. A shock wave. Even a shockwave, if you will. Total Annihilation didn't have any, Supreme Commander did. Oh, I remember once when SupCom's nukes were supposed to have two shockwaves, one fast and light and one slow and very heavy. Not sure what happened to that.
Please look up what a shockwave actually is. What you're talking about is some weird kind of a spreading AOE damage thing that....idk.
I'm hoping that they will make the shockwave of the planet crashing spread throughout the entire planet... make the shockwave mean a real impact as everything on the planet gets destroyed....
What happened was people could outrun the shockwaves. Yes, if properly set up this would be cool. It has been brought up several times, specifically for nukes. I suspect, however, that stuff like this is going to be way down the priority queue.
There's no talk of shock waves doing much damage, I think the post is more about "are there going to be shock waves, and how would they interact with stuff? "
Shockwaves don't necessarily need to destroy units. Just it could merely have short/long lasting stun effect depending on the location/distance from the cause of the shockwave.
EMP is not required, though it is a use. A grenade does not contain an emp, but it can still knock you flat on your ***. Assuming it doesn't kill you first. Kinetic force can also make a pretty good stunner, though short lasting on machines. Could be just the little push one needs to turn the tide of the battle. Or it could have long lasting effects like destabilization of targeting scanners that must be properly recalibrated before the unit can shoot/aim as well as it did before. Lots of options with shockwaves.
As far as I can tell, this is a pretty accurate description of a shockwave. It's not highly detailed, but I can understand him immediately.
Shockwave - an expanding wave of pressure usually from an explosion. It's what does the damage. If the game didn't have shockwaves explosions wouldn't do anything. An EMP is not a shockwave. It's a pulse of energy.
I wouldn't mind big AoE explosions having quickly-spreading "Shockwave" damage rather than the instant circle they have now. Such a mechanic would be particularly useful for when planet collisions get a second pass.
Shockwaves move so fast that there wouldn't really be a difference gameplay-wise. Would be a nice cosmetic effect tho.
When I said "sphere" I should have said "shell", but that alone shouldn't confuse you. A ring is just the circumference of a circle, without the area. A shell is just the surface of a sphere, without the volume. An expanding ring (or shell) is as much like a unidirectional shockwave as an RTS game needs to represent. The damage is only on the wavefront. The explosions in game don't have shockwaves, they're instantaneous. Instantaneous probably wouldn't be a bad thing, except that you can see the particle effects of explosions are clearly meant to radiate. The boring alternative would simply be to design new effects that are as instantaneous as the game mechanic they represent.
sphere =/= shell =/= ring You said sphere, but it's a shell represented on the ground by a ring. Explosions DO have shockwaves. That's how they do damage. They just expand so fast that it seems instant (doesn't make a difference to gameplay).
An expanding shockwave has to be processed multiple times. What happens if units enter or exit the destruction ring more than once? Do they get hit multiple times? Instant AoE is just easier to deal with. A slow expanding AoE may be more suitable for planetary destruction, where the damage is lethal and you WANT to give players some hope of escape.
Units moving away from the blast could be hit several times and units moving towards the blast might not be damaged by the slow wave at all. In the Spring engine(Zero-K for example) units will always be hit by the explosion according to the position they had when the explosion were set off. The delay is timed and if the unit is fast and the shockwave is slow, the unit might not visually be hit by the explosion but will still take damage.
I would be so incredibly at odds with that Spring implementation. It's efficient, though. Leaves no unanswered questions. That reminds me just how much I loved the Redeemer.
